Goodreads Author

After earning a degree in English from the University of Central Florida, Austin Scott Collins spent 13 years as a cargo pilot and flight instructor for a company which no longer exists before retiring from commercial aviation to concentrate on sailing and writing.

He now lives on a sailboat with his wife Trish. Among the things he does not have are a television, a car, a lawnmower, and a permanent physical address.

When not working on his latest book (and the binary stars of Time and Money are in harmonic alignment), Austin can be found skydiving, flying gliders, riding his motorcycle (sometimes on extremely long trips) or exploring the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, which is where he and Trish are docked for the moment.

Although they weAfter earning a degree in English from the University of Central Florida, Austin Scott Collins spent 13 years as a cargo pilot and flight instructor for a company which no longer exists before retiring from commercial aviation to concentrate on sailing and writing.

He now lives on a sailboat with his wife Trish. Among the things he does not have are a television, a car, a lawnmower, and a permanent physical address.

When not working on his latest book (and the binary stars of Time and Money are in harmonic alignment), Austin can be found skydiving, flying gliders, riding his motorcycle (sometimes on extremely long trips) or exploring the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, which is where he and Trish are docked for the moment.

Although they were forced to give up most of their books when they abandoned their landbound existence, they agree that the geographical flexibity of having a floating portable home more than justifies that sacrifice, and do not rule out the possibility of becoming full-time maritime vagabonds at some point.

If you “Like” Austin's Facebook author page, there is an infinitesimal but nonzero probability that your favorite celebrity crush will come over to your house later and offer you a foot rub.

Like any other creative enterprise, writing is a way to capture, amplify, comment on, analyze, criticize, and appreciate human experience. All art strives, in some manner, to express feelings and desires, but each form has its own special power. Music, for example, can strongly convey mood. Visual media can evoke a sense of illusionary reality so effectively that it can trigger terror or deligh...
Read more of this blog post »

With a strong and confident voice that merges the observational humor of Erma Bombeck, the screwball sensibility of Dave Barry, and the hardened irreverence of Caitlin Moran, Christina Crall-Reed gives us a brutally frank and scathingly funny accountWith a strong and confident voice that merges the observational humor of Erma Bombeck, the screwball sensibility of Dave Barry, and the hardened irreverence of Caitlin Moran, Christina Crall-Reed gives us a brutally frank and scathingly funny account of lightning strikes, cancer scares, love, mourning, and addiction in The Incontinental Divide: A Coming of Middle-Age Story.

Although primarily about confronting the realities of middle age, this series of largely self-contained essays builds in a chronological sequence to explore much larger issues: the sacrifices and compromises that make life great and terrible, the strange and senseless plot twists of human experience, the universality of suffering and loss, the carefree cluelessness of childhood, the exhaustion of motherhood, the awful realization that It’s All Up to You Now, and the strength it takes to get naked in front of a full-length mirror.

Confessional and cathartic, TID takes us on a journey from a Wisconsin Dairy farm to a fleeting moment of dubious fame to drug rehab, and keeps us laughing the whole way. Crall-Reed tells us that if she were a gambler, she wouldn’t bet on herself. But this poignant and hilarious autobiographical rumination is a winner....more

“Well, for instance, why does everything always have to be written from the point of view of a human being? Why not write from the point of view of a cat? Or a tree?”
―
Austin Scott Collins,
Crass Casualty (The Victoria da Vinci novels)

“I do not run from beauty, my own or anyone else's. If it is a gift, I claim it and I use it. And if it is a curse, well...I claim it and use it." Victoria da Vinci”
―
Austin Scott Collins,
Dicing Time for Gladness

“Is it more virtuous, more noble, to suffer silently with brave, graceful dignity? Or is it preferable to fight an utterly hopeless battle against the inevitability of an insignificant, mediocre, obscure, mundane existence?”
―
Austin Scott Collins,
Dicing Time for Gladness

Flag Abuse

Flagging a post will send it to the Goodreads Customer Care team for review.
We take abuse seriously in our discussion boards.
Only flag comments that clearly need our attention.
As a general rule we do not censor any content on the site.
The only content we will consider removing is spam,
slanderous attacks on other members,
or extremely offensive content (eg. pornography, pro-Nazi, child abuse, etc).
We will not remove any content for bad language alone, or being critical
of a particular book.